Jakub Alexander curates the music selections here at the blog. He also runs his Moodgadet record label out of Brooklyn, NY and does A&R for Ghostly International Records.
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Since the CMJ festival has taken over most of the venues here in New York, it’s a bit overwhelming to plan out your day since your favorite musician could be playing right at this moment since most shows start at noon and end at 4 am. Last night I went to see Trus’me who was in that Tom Croose mix from yesterday and couldn’t even stay because i was so beat from the last 2 shows before. Today i’m off to see Hatchback, School of Seven Bells, Tobacco, Praveen and i think Madlib, i hope to have a full report to you all of new findings and free mp3 downloads.

Tom Croose is one half of the Brooklyn DJ duo Worst Friends who recently put this mix together that is debuting here on ISO50. I thought I should share it here since it’s a really diverse sounding mix and most of the songs picked for the mix are pretty new to me. If you want more from Tom Croose he just released a 7 inch vinyl limited to 300 or download it here from us. The partial photo above is courtesy of Alex/HeadUp (who you may see once in a while on the blog) shot with his Holga.

What really makes my day and keeps me from not just becoming a complete hermit is when i see or meet passionate people and the most passionate person I know is my good friend Danny(The Reflecting Skin) by a long shot. If you ever could witness him enjoying a track or him performing it honestly will make you smile, you’ll have no other choice. Watching him is a mixture of a mad scientist that thinks he has nailed down some brand new formula for something extra special and is pacing back and forth and is completely unreachable or him literally dropping to his knees and giving you the “wait for it….ok now”. I wasn’t even allowed to speak in his room when we first listened to the new Telefon Tel Aviv record but when he played me this Arc Lab track at a really high bit rate and on great speakers he did all of the above. The bell comes in like it’s ringing on a foggy morning at about 5 am a 100 yards away then just a simple average IDM drum pattern comes to partner up the bell and you wait and there it is its simple and low but the bassline appears thicker than trying to eat cheese cake with a dry throat. The song comes completely alive with the melodies fighting for your attention like Aphex Twin’s “Fingerbib”. I hope you can enjoy it as much as Danny and I do.

Mike Cina, one of the brains behind the prodigious YouWorkForThem design collective/ store/pretty-much-anything-else-you-can-imagine, is the artist of three gorgeous new 12″ sleeves for Spectral Sound.

Cina’s original 12″ sleeves displayed both a neo-classical and an abstract beauty in their immaculately composed, eerily evocative forms, while marking a new era for the Ann Arbor-based label. The three covers represent a new breed of Spectral talent including Kate Simko, Sami Koivikko, and Cologne-based duo Daso & Pawas. All of Cina’s recent work for Ghostly/Spectral was on display at Ghostly founder Sam Valenti IV’s home gallery this past month.

The covers are rendered as Giclee prints, which are created using professional 8-color to 12-color ink-jet printers. These impeccable printers are capable of producing incredibly detailed prints for both the fine art and photographic markets alike.

Each individual print is hand-numbered (in an extremely limited run of 40) and signed in the bottom right-hand corner by Mike Cina. The prints are available online at The Ghostly Store alongside shirt designs by Cina.

The last thing I would do to you guys is post Peter Bjorn and John – “Young Folk’s”, let’s be honest it was one of the catchiest tunes around and my favorite track when it came out but I honestly don’t think I could sit through it right now all the way thru. Well, PBJ came back and didn’t disappoint at all with a vinyl and digital only release that I couldn’t just post only one track of. I love the direction of this record, at times it’s like a poppy Bibio album and touches that 70s-80s PBS background music style but in hi-fi. If you’re going to ever buy an LP this year and don’t have a record player this is the purchase to make because the LP comes with a digital download and you can give the LP to friend and they’ll love you for it.

Earlier this year we posted The Chap “Auto Where To” on the blog and went off on a tangent on how much i loved it, well Ghostly International put together an amazing collection of remixers and edits of past Chap song’s including the French producer Joakim, check it out here.

Matthew Dear has a new 10 inch record coming out Tuesday with a few different style remixes from DFA’s The Juan Maclean for the Pom Pom single off his latest album Asa Breed. The 10 inch vinyl can be picked up on his tour dates with Telefon Tel Aviv. The guitar is pretty gnarly in the track but what I love about it is the breakdown and the build back up. Since I put up the pretty downtempo psychedelic cuts from Harmonia(which i can’t get enough of) and DJ Shadow I had to pair up the Pom Pom track with an old favorite of mine which is this Skatebaard track who recently was on DFA’s Supersoul compilation. Enjoy.